Cloud storage services trend is picking up on a fast pace and as per the report of IDC; the market for cloud storage services looks brilliant in year 2013. As per the new survey offered by FixYa, a community based trouble shooting research firm- Capacity, Security and missing files are the top five concerns of users of top five cloud storage services on a global note. As per the Gartner study, 7% of personal data was stored in Cloud in 2012 and it will reach 36% by the year 2016.
FixYa conducted a survey by taking the customers of Dropbox, Google Drive, Sugar Sync, iCloud and Box into account. The survey got a good response from the users as almost 7000 users participated in the survey. A major share among them responded that their major concerns were security and capacity and some among them also brought the issue of missing files into limelight.
“Cloud based file storage is becoming a probable method for sharing files these days and it includes on personal devices and the devices at the workplace,” said Yaniv Bensadon, CEO, FixYa. He added that the main aim of the survey conducted by the company was to educate the customers and let them know the best IP storage service which fits into their needs.
The survey also uncovered some of the major concerns turning common in most of the cloud storage services which include synchronization issues.
Some more details related to the survey conducted on the top 5 cloud storage providers on an individual basis are available below-
Dropbox- Dropbox is a most popular consumer storage service provider which has bagged 100 million users base last month. It has openly confessed that it has one billion files saved on its platform and the count is still going on. One of the major highlights of Dropbox is that it supports Windows, Linux, Blackberry, Android and iOS as it supports desktops and mobile devices.
Now coming to the survey results, 40 percent of Dropbox users, who participated in FixYa survey complained about security concern. Twenty five percent of them reported that they were concerned about the storage capacity limits and 15% of them complained about file synchronization. Almost 10% of them complained about slow responses. In the year 2012, Dropbox faced multiple security issues in the past which include a hacking concern in mid 2012, which resulted in spammed emails sent to a major section of DropBox Users. There were issues related to privacy settings in 2011, where 35% of dropbox users complained that their accounts were being accessed without a password.
But still the craze for dropbox is still intact and hope this IP storage provider retains its top one position in the year 2013 as well.
Google Drive- Google drive is in the race of IP storage from this year. But the fact is that it gained a large number of user base within no time. One of the major concerns of G-Drive is that the users of it experienced missing folders. Almost 30% of them have experienced such a problem so far and the count is still going on. Google storage support never came up with a satisfactory answer till date. But some of the industry veterans have indicated that the problem is with the sync feature of this cloud storage provider and it is playing the spoilsport.
Google storage became very popular and gained a welcome signature from almost all the patrons of the worlds leading web search giant. But FixYa survey has confirmed that nearly 20% of G-Drive users are unhappy with the automatic conversion from simply using Google drive and to adopt Google docs. Twenty percent of them were bothered about unknown errors and ten percent of them reported other issues in the survey. FixYa survey has concluded that G-Drive has no major security concerns, but it still experiences general usability issues that need to be addressed on a smart note.
Sugar Sync- QuickBooks, which is business accounting software for businesses, is not available in Sugar Sync and so thirty percent of SugarSync users are unhappy with this IP storage provider. As Sugarsync doesn’t support Quickbooks, it is touch to sell for financial users. Almost 60% of respondents in the FixYa survey responded that they were not happy with the storage space and to be more particular, about its storage space pricing. Moreover, many feel that the pricing of Sugarsync is too high than any other cloud service providers.
iCloud- Apple iCloud is a cloud storage service which tops in United States. It took a major leap when the users updated to OS X Mountain Lion and this was agreed by 35% of the users who participated in the FixYa survey. But the fact is that a major section of new OS X Mountain Lion are unhappy with the sign up services, sync services, backup and other applications. But FixYa has concluded that Apple iCloud is still the number one cloud storage provider in America and will continue to be in the year ahead.
Box- Box is very popular with the small businesses as it is enriched with security capabilities and management features. But from the couple of years many of its users complained about its security issues and uploading problems. Reacting to the same, 25% of survey respondents chose for security concerns and another 25% reported uploading issues in FixYa survey. Mainly personal account users of Box are concerned with the security issue. Box has already recommended to its users to restart their PCs and clear the browser cache, if in case they had issues while uploading files. To be frank, Box is different cloud storage when compared to its rivals, as it runs in a more collaborative platform, similar to that of Google Drive.
storageservers.wordpress.com 